How to Take Better Photos With iOS 7 Camera On Your iPhone & iPad

iPhone photography is one of the most creative outlet that any iPhone-user can have. Notwithstanding the fact that more number of people take photos on the iPhone than any other smartphone, it still takes some amount of prior knowledge to click the best pictures on your iPhone.

With iOS 7, the Camera app gets a shot in the arm with not just a redesign but a rework. There are quite a bunch of new features that make clicking amazing pictures and videos that much more easier. What’s even better is that on the iPhone 5s/5c, the quality of the camera has been enhanced too with powerful sensors.

Learning a few things about the new camera app can help you grab the right moment correctly, capture picturesque moments and add picturesque detail to them through filters, do the rule of thirds correctly and more. Check this out:

THE BURST MODE

In a frame that has a lot of action, capturing the right moment is hard. But not if you use the burst mode.

The burst mode is a new entrant to the camera app. When you press and hold on the shutter button, the iPhone captures a lot of images. On the iPhone 5s, the limit is 10 and on the iPhone 5, the limit is 3 per burst mode.

You’re not going to use the burst mode often but many people make the mistake of not using the feature when they’re capturing a rapid action shot. Someone doing a back-flip? Your kid playing? Use the burst mode and thank the Apple folks later. You’d be surprised at how using the burst mode actually brings up wonderful photos that you couldn’t have possibly planned to capture.

LIVE FILTERS

Okay, filters isn’t new. Instagram did it. So did almost every other camera-related app in town but Apple finally introduced it in iOS 7. When they did, it was live filters, thankfully.

On any iDevice running iOS 7, you’ve got the filter icon (three intersecting circles) in the camera app. Tap that and you have 8 filters to choose from. When you select one, it gets applied “real-time” to the scene you are about to capture.

Live filters is not just cool but it’s useful. Applying a filter to a photo is okay but being able to see how a photo will look or turn out to be once you apply the filter is even better.

USE THE GRID

Careful, meticulous photographers make use of the grid. The grid offers a rule-of-thirds setting which can help you frame/compose your shots for those cinematic or photographic effect. There’s a lot to learn about shot composition and in almost all cases, you need the grid to work with.

I don’t, however, think that iOS 7 made it easy for people who routinely toggle the grid. In iOS 6, you had the ability to turn off/on the grid right from the camera’s interface. In iOS 7, you have to head all the way to Settings → Photos & Camera → to turn on the grid.

SLO-MO FOR IPHONE 5S

Exclusively for iPhone 5s owners, you have the beautiful slo-mo capture. Videos on the iPhone 5s are recorded at 120fps which paves the way for really, totally smooth slow motion video renders.

You can edit videos after you have recorded them. Using the slo-mo edit feature, you can select where the slo-mo effect is applied. Exporting the slo-mo videos can be a little hard considering that the videos are 120fps.

Older iPhone users don’t feel left out. There are otherapps that do slo-mo decently.

DON’T FORGET THE VIDEO ZOOM

Finally, a lot has been written about the video zoom feature. In iOS 7, you can zoom as you record video too. Done correctly, you can replicate some of the coolest video zoom effects – the passive, slow and calculated one is my favorite.

The zoom feature is triggered just by a two-finger pinch just as in photos.